


searching the ground for a bitter song

by notavodkashot



Series: words are futile devices [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: A little, Character Study, Child Soldiers, Cultural Assimilation, Drautos' fucked up approximately everyone, Everything hurts but also everything is getting better, Exiles vs Refugees, F/M, Galahdians Are Weird About Birthday Traditions, Galahdians being Galahdians, Gen, Immigration woes, Insistent Terminology, M/M, Sometimes family is a choice, Sometimes you hate the world for making you choose, The Fall of Galahd, The Walk, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-10 20:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12919836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot
Summary: Fills for the Glaiveweek over at tumblr, all set withinthe sun is outverse, focusing on Nyx, Libertus, Crowe, Pelna and Luche.





	1. origins | background | before joining the kingsglaive | routine | day in the life

* * *

_i. origins | background | before joining the kingsglaive | routine | day in the life_

* * *

_i.i. nyx_

* * *

Nyx is thirteen when he signs up to be a runner for the skirmish taskforces steadily chipping away at the Nilfs. His mother disapproves, he can see it in the twitch of her mouth when he comes home with lines and arrows on his skin and a sea of tears stubbornly held back in his eyes and now maybe forever stuck there, because if he'd cried while they marked him, they'd have stopped and he'd have been sent away. They'll keep him, instead, and his mother frowns and frowns and frowns, but doesn't actually say anything, because he's thirteen and she's never tried to mark him and keep him for herself. 

Selena grinds leaves and herbs and Ramuh knows what else, and paints over the fresh tattoos with the resulting paste. In the morning they're healed entirely, looking like they're a decade old, at least, and she's so smug about it, Nyx can't help but love her desperately for it. She's every bit the healer he'll never be, wise and patient and kind. 

Nyx is thirteen, when he signs up to defend his home by doing what he's told; he reckons that's all he's really good for and he's fine with it. He's not smart like Libertus or wise like Selena or clever like Arleen. All he has is a body that's gangly and unwieldy, not yet fully grown, but that's all he needs to be of use. To make a difference, one day. Every bit counts, he thinks, and he knows deep down this is not what his mother meant, when she tried to teach him the adage, but it still tastes of truth on his tongue. 

Nyx is thirteen the first time he gets shot, kills a man, wakes up screaming, understands war. 

Nyx is thirteen and he does as he's told and by the time he's fourteen and Libertus joins his unit – _conscripted_ , some whisper snidely, disdainfully, as if it meant anything, whether you chose to die or not, once you're dead, those friends of friends of potential friends, but none of them big enough or strong enough Nyx won't kick in their teeth for letting their mouths slither too much - he's learned to smirk and pretend seniority in murder means anything at all. 

* * *

_i.ii. libertus_

* * *

His job is almost boring, really. Following Nyx on his runs and keeping him safe. Murdering Nilfs when they run into them. Standing in corners and looking quiet and dumb while Nyx peppers his reports with quips and jokes that should fall flat, but somehow don't. Maybe he only thinks so because he's been doing it all his life, though. 

Nyx is reckless and stupid and blessed with luck that swings in extremes. Libertus used to hate him for it, until he understood that for every new height he reached, there was a drop just as steep waiting for him. Then he pitied him for it, until he told him about it and great git kicked his teeth in for his trouble. They've been brothers ever since. 

Libertus doesn't want glory, anyway. It reeks too much of Lucian bullshit to him. He's Galahdian, through and through. In Galahd, you live and you fight and then you die, and no one gives a solitary fuck about you, once you're gone. That's how it's supposed to go, that's what makes them strong. You live, and then you die, and if you didn't do all you wanted in the time you had, you have no one to blame but yourself. 

Libertus is Galahdian, he sneers at the very idea of regret. He doesn't regret the burn of the tattoos, lines and arrows, yes, but scattered differently, pointedly – conscripted, they say, to anyone who cares to look, that he's Galahdian but not Galahdian enough to offer his life willingly for their sake. He doesn't regret the ache of bones cracked again on the unmended bits, because all MTs truly kick the same, aim at the same spots, and he only has so many bones to break. He doesn't regret helping put a torch to his own home, because it was that or letting the Nilfs sweep in, and all that was left in there was his mother's corpse anyway. The living are Galahdian, they'll move on. The dead were Galahdian, in ashes they return to the storm. 

“What are you going to do,” Nyx asks him every night, as they huddle around the embers of the idea of what might have once been the intention of a fire, once upon a time, “when the war ends?” 

It's a game of sorts, making up outrageous things, hopes and dreams they feed to the fire and the dark, because deep down they know: they will not survive the war. Deep down, they also know: they're Galahdian enough the knowledge doesn't bend their spines. 

Libertus tells him the craziest things he can imagine, the ones he'd only get if he traded the best of Nyx's wild luck for his own sturdy aplomb. The impossible, the irreverent. 

Libertus ends each day with lies, and it almost staves off the tedium of their fate. 

* * *

_i.iii. crowe_

* * *

He's going to leave her. 

He promised not to, but he will. 

Her father promised, and he left. Her mother. Her brothers. The war opens up around them, gaping maws ready to devour them all. He's got lines and arrows on his skin, hooks sunken deep into his soul, even as he promises it'll be okay. 

He's going to leave her, they all do, but maybe this time she will leave first. Maybe this time she'll be there as well. 

Maybe this time she'll get to say goodbye. 

He's going to leave her, like her parents, her brothers, her village. He's going to leave her, but she's tired of crying. She's tired of hurting. She carves the arrows down her arms, lines along her ankles. There's no one left who knows how to do it right, so scars will have to do. Scars are forever, too. 

He yells when he sees, angry and helpless and scared. 

“Libertus,” she says, eyes sharp, “I'm not getting left behind.” 

If she's learned anything, of war, of grief, of every fucked up thing someone died to save her from, is how to make lies sound like promises she intends to keep. 

She doesn't, but that doesn't mean it's not nice to pretend, anyway. 

* * *

_i.iv pelna_

* * *

Pelna is a man of habits, so it is not entirely strange, how well he's taken to the war, now that it's become a new habit of his. 

War is easy, if you understand how it goes. If you know what it means, when you lose it. You either die now, or later, and it's all just a matter of figuring out how to extend that later indefinitely. He's in no hurry to die, so his main habit is to survive. 

Others will claim the glory of fighting in the frontlines. Others will tell stories of great battles and amazing feats. 

Pelna prefers to deal with more mundane concerns, the thankless little jobs no one thinks of, when making grand rousing speeches and rallying young fools into throwing themselves into certain death. Admittedly, Pelna is not a particularly skilled fighter, so he's probably biased, when he tallies up the math and figures out how many lives a stolen sack of grain can extend – never save, they're all going to die, today or tomorrow, and that's just how it goes – or a crate full of wool spun and woven before the looms burned to the ground. As opposed to how many he could personally shield from a force that grows more and more unstoppable with each passing day. 

But then Amira agrees with him, and he reckons that ought to count for something, because Amira is strong in ways he'll never be, and she's as unyielding as Pelna is accomodating. His wife bears no arrows or lines on her skin, for all she's learned best to wield those monstrous axes MTs flail about with. Amira is not a soldier any more Pelna is, but she could be. The fact she isn't, the fact she sees Pelna's version of a counterattack as a more worthwhile use of her skill, it's all Pelna needs to keep going. 

Even when they reach drop points and find them razed to the ground. Even when they're ran out of encampments once the deliveries are done. Even when children spit on them on their way out, hissing out _scavangers_ like it's a curse and not the very lifeline keeping them fed that night. 

Pelna is a man of habits, of logic and reason. Kindness, he knows, will not stop the war. One sack of grain, or twenty, or a million, will not stop the war. But some habits are too ingrained to break. So he kisses his wife, every morning and every night and every chance he gets, in between, and keeps up score in his head, how many tomorrows they've got left. 

* * *

_i.v. luche_

* * *

Galahd falls four months after the Walk. 

Luche watches it shrink into the horizon as they flee, braving a storm fiece enough that threatens to sink the ship. His mother weeps into her hands, wailing like she didn't, when his sister and his father died. Luche stands by her side, watching her and the others – there are others there, shapeless figures he might or might have known, once, but they all blur into a wall of misery and despair – grieving for their home. 

Galahd. 

Galahd, the forever green, the vicious, the ever storming. 

Galahd, the fierce, the never ending, the unbending. 

Galahd. Galahd. Galahd. 

Luche soaks in the depths of grief so unlike everything they've ever preached, and tries to find an echo of it in his heart. He looks and looks, turning and twisting every bit he can reach, but all he ends up with a bottomless well of rage and disdain for the altar upon which his world was slaughtered and still found wanting. 

They did what they were supposed to do. They were vicious and fierce and unbending. They relished in the greenry and the storms, the promise they would never end. They fought and fought and fought, and the war took and took and took, and none of it was enough to change the tide. They painted arrows and lines on their skin, they trusted the storm. 

The storm came and went, and yet only ashes remain. 

Luche watches Galahd fade in the distance, fists clenched helplessly at his sides, and deep in the marrow of his bones, he hopes it burns to nothing in their absence. He hopes Ramuh's throne becomes cinders and ash, empty like the promises made upon their covenant. 

If he'll fight, he decides, he won't fight for Galahd and all the broken promises scattered upon its ruins. If he'll ever fight again, it'll be purely for the pleasure of repaying the Empire the lessons it has taught him, nothing more. 

Nothing more. 

* * *


	2. birthdays | surprise jokes on you | best buddy | got your back

* * *

_ii. birthdays | surprise jokes on you | best buddy | got your back_

* * *

_ii.i. nyx_

* * *

Cor stops so abruptly Nyx nearly walks into him, and then he sighs loud enough his shoulders slump. 

“What is it?” He demands, giving Nyx a squinty look that's squintier than his usual. 

Nyx blinks and shifts Prompto's weight, resting the boy on his hip as he frowns. 

“What?” 

“Can we not?” Cor rolls his eyes. “Something's been bothering you since you woke up and if you sigh forlornly _one more time_ I swear I will do something regretable. Can we please skip the twenty questions and go straight to the part where you tell me what the fuck's wrong with you?” 

“Oh,” Nyx replies, feeling color bloom on his face as he drops his eyes and looks away in embarrassment. “It's nothing,” he mutters, perfectly mortified his sulking has apparently permeated enough even Cor The Immortal Leonis has taken notice of it. 

“Ulric,” Cor says testily, folding his arms over his chest. 

Nyx licks his lips. 

“...it's really nothing,” he insists, feeling chided like a small child. He can feel the weight of Cor's stare growing heavier every moment. “I'm being stupid,” he says instead, offering a little awkward laugh, “sorry.” 

“Obviously,” Cor retorts, deadpan, “but it's still bothering you anyway.” 

Nyx stares at Cor. Cor stares, impassive and unmovable like the mountains in the distance, right back at him. Prompto makes tiny fussing sounds, no longer lulled by the swing of Nyx's steps, and Nyx ends up pulling him up until his vicious little hands are in reach of the braids. 

Nyx sighs again, loud and very forlorn, and cracks a smile as Cor twitches in reply. 

“You're not gonna let it go, are you,” he says, and it's not really a question, so much as something he feels he needs to say, some measure of protest to preserve what's left of his dignity. Not that he's got much of it, these days. “I'd lost track of time... out there, you know,” Nyx explains slowly, shrugging awkwardly. “Didn't really realize how long it'd been, until we hit Meldacio,” he went on, rambling, deflecting, procrastinating. Cor nods, like anything Nyx has to say is worth his time. Nyx licks his lips. “Today's my birthday,” he says, a little rushed, a little awkward, carefully not looking at Cor's face and... whatever might be there. “So hey, kudos to me for making it to twenty.” He tries to laugh and doesn't quite make the mark, so he stops before he ends up doing something even more embarrassing, like crying. “I told you I was being stupid.” 

“A little bit,” Cor says, but he sounds less sharp than Nyx expects. “There's nothing wrong with wanting to celebrate the fact you're alive.” 

Nyx shrugs again, it's better than trying to untangle the weird, prickly feeling caught somewhere in his gut. He's never spent his birthday alone before. Well, he's not alone... but... he kind of is, in the way that matters. He wonders what Libertus is doing, if he's given him up for dead, if he's chosen to forget him and move on, or if he's still counting on Nyx's luck to hold on. Nyx wouldn't be mad, either way. Won't be. 

“It's... not celebrating,” he says, and he shouldn't, but Cor's still looking at him and Nyx still hasn't figured out how to keep his damn mouth shut when that happens. “I'm not... that is. I mean.” He coughs. “It's not. Strictly a celebration, what we do back home. Did.” 

Cor frowns for a moment, and then nods to himself. 

“Ah,” he says, as if remembering something unimportant, “right. Galahdian.” 

Nyx could kick him. Probably kiss him, too. But that's the kind of thought that will certainly get him killed, and honestly at this point he's almost invested in making it through the mess alive, if only because someone ought to stick around to look after Prompto. 

“Right,” Nyx says, and braces for Cor to ask, because he's Lucian and Lucians always ask. It's like a personal offense to them, that Galahdians do things differently and don't immediately explain themselves to them. 

Nyx waits and waits and waits, but all Cor does is throw him a bar of chocolate pulled out from the same void where he keeps his sword, and Nyx nearly doesn't catch it when he realizes that. 

“Well, happy birthday, anyway,” Cor tells him, shrugs, and then starts walking again. 

Nyx stands there a moment longer, absently rocking Prompto with one arm and holding onto a chocolate bar with his other hand, as he contemplates the fact Cor The Immortal Leonis apparently keeps sweets stashed away along his weapons. The thought sits light and hysterical in the back of his throat, and Nyx swallows it down slowly, carefully, lest he chokes on it. He slides the chocolate into one of the holsters of his vest, where a dagger was originally supposed to hang, and doesn't feel entirely ridiculous as he does. Then he trails after Cor, falling back into step with the brisk pace with the ease of weeks. 

It's not what he wants – he wants home and cheap beer and Libertus' dumbass jokes poking fun at every single stupid thing he's done last year – but it feels weirdly just like what he needs. 

* * *

_ii.ii. libertus_

* * *

“You got me a library card?” Libetus asks, peering down at the petite woman with a frown. 

He doesn't mean to frown, it just sort of happens. It's just the expression his face defaults on, when he's not consciously twisting it into something else. Letho's used to it, mostly. Mostly. She still flinches, keenly aware of how poorly this could be misconstrued. 

“I know you don't... do the presents on birthdays thing,” she says, antsy and twitchy, worrying her sleeves nervously. “But I do, and I wanted to give you something nice, and you love books so much and I couldn't pick just one.” She swallows hard, offering a shaky laugh. “I mean, I could narrow it down to maybe ten, but they're all stupidly expensive and rare and honestly, teaching doesn't pay enough for rare and super expensive, but I have a friend who works at the Royal Archives and we might have kind of committed identity fraud in the strictest sense... but it's the closest to giving you all the books at once, so maybe don't be mad?” She coughs. “So yeah, if anyone asks your disertation is on fourth century poetry. ...congratulations?” 

Letho giggles high in the back of her throat when he picks her up so he can kiss her and it'll never not be terrifying, the way her feet don't touch the ground when he does that, but he's not mad and she's kissing back, and it's alright. 

It's alright. 

“Shit,” he says, still not letting her back on the ground, where she belongs, and she might love him for it, just a bit, just enough to grin stupidly like she's thirteen and crushing on a boyband lead singer all over again. “That's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me.” 

“It's not,” she replies, giddy, and reaches a hand to stroke the side of his face. “Because I wasn't kidding about the identity fraud. That's not nice, Lib. Ever. Sorry about that.” 

“That's literally _the best part_ ,” Libertus laughs, and lets her down finally, gentle and slow like she's made of glass. “Shit, Letho. You didn't have to.” 

“Well, no,” she admits, and makes a show to fix her glasses back in place, like that would make a difference at all. “But I _wanted_ to. Happy birthday, Lib.” 

* * *

_ii.iii. crowe_

* * *

Crowe opens the door to the apartment and is immediately hit full on the face by the scent of spices. She takes a moment to breath in deeply, letting it curl sweet and heavy in her lungs, before she kicks the door shut behind her and she makes her way into the tiny kitchen where Libertus is busy stirring spices into a pot. Crowe walks up behind him and wraps her arms around him, burying her face into his back. 

“You weren't supposed to be back until next week,” she says, almost accusingly. She wouldn't have spent all day being cranky and short-tempered, if she'd known he'd be back home by now. But she's just glad to have him back, to really linger too much on might have been. “Ass.” 

“And miss your birthday?” He rumbles, quiet because he's concentrating, and even though she can't see his face, she knows he's frowing mightily as he adds a pinch of this and that. “Fat fucking chance.” 

“You're an idiot,” she says, because anything softer will break them both, and they've spent so long skirting around the truth any admissions still feel like some kind of defeat. “Greatest idiot in the world!” 

Crowe steps away, dodging a swipe of his arm, and goes about changing into comfortable clothes. It's ridiculous and childish, how suddenly homey the apartment feels, just because it's got Libertus in it. It's a miserable wreck, and she knows it, but it's home. It's home. It's not the home she always wanted for herself, when she was little and her village was still standing. But it's the home she's got, with the brother who not only stayed, but chose to. And she doesn't know if it's better or not, because of it, but it's what she's got and she'll defend it with fire and brimstone if necessary. Pretty damn literally, these days. 

She goes sit on the counter, once she's wearing something loose and shapeless, purely because it makes Libertus glare at her like she's a misbehaving child. 

“Should I start with the big ones or the small ones?” He asks, one eyebrow arched, the corner of his lips twitching up just enough to make his scowl look funny. 

“You should start by letting me lick the spoon,” she says, eyes dancing with mischief, “and remember very well I know where you sleep, if you decide to save up the embarrassing ones, for when Nyx drops by.” 

Libertus makes a show offering the spoon, then dodges her hand and instead pokes her nose, leaving a smear of dark red paste on it. 

“How about that time you asked Nyx what Cor _the fucking Immortal_ Leonis is like, in the sack?” 

Crowe bursts out cackling so hard she nearly falls of her perch. 

* * *

_ii.iv pelna_

* * *

Pelna has never been one to fuss about tradition. The fact he asked Amira to marry him when he was seventeen is testament to that. The fact she'd agreed is undeniable proof that she's not hungup about it, either. In his mind, tradition has always been wisdom curated by time. But wisdom isn't wise, when you try to stretch it to cover every possible scenario, beyond what it was originally meant to deal with. 

Pelna knows all about the whispers and the sidelooks, when he refuses to isolate his boys and confine them to live in the shadow of a world they never even knew. His boys were born in Insomnia, and while he's not adverse to them learning about their heritage and embracing it in places, he's also not going to force them to live a lie and pretend they're growing up in Galahd. 

Galahd is gone, and they're not. 

They're _not_. 

So Pelna encourages his boys to befriend whoever they want and he doesn't try to stop them from learning bits and pieces of Lucian culture, even if he's personally baffled by most of it. Pelna braves the wrath of their entire building by letting his boys befriend Nyx's, and feels confident anyone he can't stare down about it still won't stand a chance against Amira. 

“It's so weird,” Amira muses, as they go over expenses and the checklist for Harit's birthday party, on his request to be handled the Lucian way, rather the traditional one, for the sake of inviting his – very Lucian – classmates along. “It's like they care more about the food itself, what type it is, I mean, than the fact they'll be eating together.” 

“I'm still tripping over the gift thing, myself,” Pelna admits, smiling wryly. 

Amira arches both eyebrows and grins, beautiful and wicked and Pelna remembers vividly why he knew at seventeen that he wanted to spend eternity at her side. 

“Kinky.” 

* * *

_ii.v. luche_

* * *

Luche wakes up to the sound of his front door being kicked open. He recognizes the sound of heels clicking on his floor, though, and he relaxes enough to dismiss the daggers he'd summoned on reflex. He lets out two shuddering breaths and composes himself enough that by the time Aranea bursts into his bedroom he looks convincingly annoyed. 

“Here you go, shithead,” she announces deceptively, dangerously cheerful, as she throws a small cupcake his way. 

Luche catches it on reflex, and then blinks at it, annoyance giving way to blank incomprehension. Then again, Aranea Highwind might possibly be the single most bizarre creature in the world and he's almost used by now, to feeling like he either lives inside her brain, both of them in sync and following along the same script, or like she's a mystical, magical creature that came from an entirely different _planet_. This morning, he's leaning more on the latter, than the former. 

“You got me a cupcake,” he says, watching her fumble around the pockets of her jacket, clearly searching for something. “At,” he continues, glancing over the alarm clock on the nightstand, “five thirty in the morning. Remind me again, why I thought giving you my spare keys was a good idea?” 

“Because sex makes you stupid,” Aranea replies without skipping a beat. “It's almost endearing.” 

Luche snorts loudly. He is still holding the cupcake in his hands, when she finds what she's looking for – a small white-and-blue candle – and reaches out to stick it right on top of the it. Luche watches in fascination as she snaps her fingers near the wick and causes it to burst into a tiny flame. He is absently pleased to know he's not going to spend his birthday in the hospital for third degree burns. He's feeling gracious enough to not voice that realization, too. 

“Happy birthday,” she announces proudly, dropping to sit on the side of the bed with a pleased, smug look on her face. “Make a wish.” 

Luche arches an eyebrow at her. 

“You do know I'm Galahdian, right?” He asks, if only to be contrary, even though he's well aware the corner of his mouth is giving away the laughter he's desperately trying to hold back. 

“You're as Galahdian as I'm a Nilf,” Aranea points out with a roll of her eyes. “Now shut the fuck up and make a wish.” 

Luche holds her gaze when he leans in to blow off the tiny candle. 

He smirks. 

“Well that's disappointing,” he says, arching an eyebrow as he plucks the candle away before it can melt into the rest of the cupcake. “You're still wearing clothes.” 

“Nice try,” Aranea snorts, rolling her eyes at him. “You might have the day off, birthday boy, but I clock-in in twenty minutes.” 

“You're going to leave me all on my own on my birthday? _The whole day?_ ” Luche asks, mock-sad. “The nerve.” 

She grins and leans in to press her mouth to the corner of his, less a kiss and more like the vague indent of one. 

“I'm sure you'll figure out a way to keep yourself entertained.” 

Then she's gone about as abruptly as she came in, leaving in a whirlwind of heels clicking on his shitty acrylic floor and that tangy, citrus perfume she wears that always stays behind just enough to make him remember her but not enough to be annoying. The apartment is abysmally quiet, once she's gone, and Luche sits back against the headboard, tiny cupcake still cradled in his hands, and wonders what the fuck he's even doing with his life. 

* * *


	3. family | for hearth and home | missing you | remembrance

* * *

_iii. family | for hearth and home | missing you | remembrance_

* * *

_iii.i. nyx_

* * *

Nyx attends his first meeting since his return to Insomnia with trepidation and a not so small amount of nerves. He's never really had much of a stake in the quarterly gatherings to organize the struggling Galahdian community into a semblance of order, before, but now he's got a very small toddler to look after, and he's keenly aware he needs all the help he can get. He's always done his part, anyway, so it's not like he feels guilty for hoping they'll maybe tell him what to do, now that he's decided he's going to keep Prompto. 

As the meeting ends, however, he finds himself heading for the exit without bothering to stick around for any mingling. Prompto's fussing and Nyx is keenly, patently aware of exactly how unwanted he is, at the moment. 

“Nyx Ulric,” Themis Eleos, this year's chosen Elder for Anemoi, calls him just before he can make a dash for it with some modicum of dignity left to him. “A word if you please.” 

Nyx really fucking doesn't, and there's something raw and bitter clogging up his throat, but he can't afford to make things worse by denying a request from an Elder. Especially not the one from his own fucking island. He doesn't know her, personally, but then he doesn't personally know every Galahdian survivor in Insomnia. He can't even remember who he voted for, last time. Probably whoever Libertus told him to. He's the one who keeps up with the politics and the in-fighting, picking sides and having opinions about a whole lot of things that Nyx can't be bothered to. Still, they're supposed to be from the same island, and she's supposed to be his Elder too, and that's a lot of supposition going around, when all Nyx really wants is to maybe curl up with his son and remind himself why he hasn't allowed himself to die just yet. 

“Of course, ma'am,” Nyx replies, smile held on his face with pins and a desire to make things as easy and quick as possible. 

She takes him out of the patio and up the stairs, leading him into one of the dozen tiny apartments in the second floor. Nyx ducks his head when he enters, out of habit more than any real need, and stands awkwardly in the cramped little space. 

“You're a good boy,” she says, closing the door behind her and heading over to sit in a chair by the window. 

Nyx stares at her for a moment, and then swallows hard when he realizes he's expected to reply. 

“Thank you, ma'am,” he says, tired and worn and trying very hard not to look too much at the room they're in. 

“But,” she adds, patient and also very tired, and Nyx wonders why they're doing this if they're both tired and would rather not be here at all, “like all good boys, you are, on occasion, prone to making mistakes. Which is all well and good, of course, if we never made mistakes, we'd never learn any better.” She gives him a conspiratory smile that he tries his best to return. “The burden placed on you, however, makes your mistakes have consequences for others beyond yourself.” 

“Burden,” Nyx repeats, trying to bleed out the testiness of his tone, and not quite managing. 

“You've been prompted, haven't you? To Commander of the Kingsglaive,” she points out, eyebrows arched almost challengingly. “Most of us think it's a good thing, to have one of our own at its head, considering its significance for all of us.” 

“Ah,” Nyx says, nodding tersely as he tries his best to ignore the ugly bubbling in the pit of his gut, “of course.” 

It's no secret the Kingsglaive is the only reason they've all thrived, in their exile. Captain Dra– _Glauca_ never really understood it, the way his men could simply give up half their salary, sometimes even more, to a communal fund like it was the most natural thing in the world. For the sake of helping people they didn't even know, or had any stronger bond to than having been born in the same land. He wasn't Galahdian, of course – he wasn't many things, and Nyx needs to stop thinking about it, lest he makes himself throw up – so he didn't know how things were done, back home, or why it's so important that they keep doing them that way. Nyx does know. He _does_. Half the reason he chose to accept the King's offer – Cor was so very insistent he took it as an offer, and not an order, to impress on him the importance of thinking if he was really willing to commit to it and everything that came with it – was precisely because he knows. 

The Kingsglaive means resources for his people, the very literal difference between some of them starving or not. It wasn't a decision made rashly, for all most of the important decisions in Nyx's life have been, so far, and it's not a duty he takes lightly, either. 

“I'm not going to tell you that keeping that boy is a mistake,” Themis says, although by Nyx's best estimations, that's exactly what she just did, “but I will point out it does... send out a very confusing message.” 

“All due respect, ma'am,” Nyx begins, and then bites his tongue when she raises a hand to keep him quiet. 

“I know you don't care,” she snorts, “if you cared, you wouldn't have brought him _here_ in the first place. But you did bring him, and now I'm afraid I must be the one to tell you that you _must_ care, in the future, what your actions say to those around you.” 

“He's my son,” Nyx says, and wonders how many times he'll have to keep saying it, until the whole fucking world stops asking if he really does mean it. “What exactly does that say?” 

“The same thing you living with your Lucian lover does,” she says, matter-of-fact and frank to the point Nyx can't quite stop spluttering enough to explain that Cor's not his lover, for all he really wishes he were, in his best self-destructive moments. “That you're the _mingling_ kind. That you don't honor tradition. That you willingly break bread with outsiders. That you take no pride in being Galahdian. That you want to be _Lucian_ , instead, because it'd be easier. Safer.” 

That you're weak, she doesn't say, but he hears it anyway. 

The weak do not surive, in Galahd. 

“He's my _son_ ,” Nyx says, “and if anyone has a problem with that, they can take it to me.” 

“You know they will,” Themis sighs, lips pursed in disapproval. “Which is why you'll be thoughtful of me, and my duty to keep the peace, and not bring him here anymore. I'm not telling you to give the boy away,” she says, and again, Nyx feels she is, anyway, “it's too late for that, clearly. And I'm not going to tell them to stay away from him, if your kin does want him. But I'm also not going to tell them to accept him. I can't.” She narrows her eyes at him. “You know that.” 

And he does, in a way, know that. He does. It sits heavy and bitter in the back of his throat. 

“I understand,” he says, brushing a hand over Prompto's head, licking his lips, and feeling so very tired, “thank you for your kindness.” 

“We're at war, Commander,” she says, pulling down the neckline of her shirt to reveal a neat line of arrows tattooed along her collarbone. “We're soldiers, you and I, fighting the same war. We're both just doing what needs to be done.” 

Nyx nods mutely, not trusting his tongue to not spit out venom in reply. 

He keeps donating his share, to the communal funds. He keeps up the holidays, teaching Prompto about each one as best he can remember them. He votes for a new Elder every year, and actually figures out who to vote for on his own, without Libertus' input. 

But he never goes back to the meetings. To the mingling. To the bits and pieces he wants more than air itself. 

That's not _his_ any longer. 

* * *

_iii.ii. libertus_

* * *

“What he's trying to ask,” Libertus snaps, short-tempered and blunt, always, giving Nyx a scowling look, “is why you've stopped saying it.” 

Nyx blinked. 

“What?” 

“For hearth and home,” Libertus says, slower, less a warcry or a motto, and just... words. It sounds odd on his tongue, said that way. “It was... it's weird, I don't know. We were getting used to that.” 

Nyx's expression darkens a sliver. 

“We were getting used to a lot of things,” he says, shrugging slowly. “But you're right, it's been a conscious choice on my part, not to say it.” 

“Why the fuck not?” Axis demands, voice low and hissing, eyes narrowed defensively. 

Libertus is wondering much the same, but he snarls a bit at Axis anyway, because the only one who gets to threaten to strangle Nyx is him, dammit. Also because Axis would strangle Nyx, and frankly Libertus is not sure he can keep himself from murdering whoever's stupid enough to try and replace him. 

“Why would I?” Nyx asks, eyebrows arched mockingly. “That's just some bullshit chant Glauca came up to make us feel we were fighting for something other than how much we fucking hate the Nilfs. And I know we all sucked it right up, along with all his fuckery, but the day I put a fucking knife in his face was the day I promised myself I was done with his bullshit.” 

“It's traditional,” Luche pipes up, because of course he does, “isn't it?” 

Libertus realizes he thought so too, but then, he knows better. He _knows_ better. He laughs, loud over the whispers and the muttering. 

“No, it ain't,” he says, nodding at Nyx because Nyx is clever about shit, and Libertus shouldn't be surprised by it, but he is, every time he stumbles on that knowledge. “They're not _our_ words. Drautos-” 

“ _Glauca_ ,” Nyx hisses, poignant, clever, vicious. 

“Glauca just kept repeating them over and over again until we thought they were.” Libertus snorts. “We didn't have fancy words, back home. We just did what needed doing.” 

He sees them try to question, eyes turning to him, judging. It's a sick twist of irony, that showing off the marks on his skin now helps him shut up the sneers, rather than invite them. But then, only Nyx and himself are surviving soldiers, from Galahd. Actual soldiers, with the arrows and the lines on their skin. The rest stayed and died, and Libertus doesn't think about that, even when he does. 

“We don't need stupid words,” Libertus says, folding his arms over his chest and daring anyone to argue with him about it. “We know what we're fighting for.” 

“Well, that's my theory anyway,” Nyx says, grinning like the idiot he is, “but we can totally come up with a new motto if you guys are into that sort of thing.” His eyes dance with amusement and he couldn't look more different from Drautos in that moment, if he tried. “Make it into a whole bonding experience.” He laughs at the borderline horrified looks he gets for his efforts. “Fine, I guess _don't fucking die, you idiots_ , will have to suffice.” 

Later, after the meeting has disbanded and the afternoon drills are over, Libertus sits with Nyx in Cor The Immortal's kitchen, sharing a beer and pretending he's still not supremely weirded out and a little hurt by Nyx's insistence to live with the guy, instead of being sensible and moving in with him and Crowe. It'd be cramped, granted, but they've shared worse. 

“For hearth and home,” Libertus mutters, shaking his head. “That really is the most un-Galahdian thing to say, isn't it?” 

“It sounds grandiose enough,” Nyx muses, grinning wryly. “Sometimes people like grandiose stuff. Hey, Cor!” He turns to the man currently poring over paperwork in the dining table, like it's the most natural thing in the world, and a corner of Libertus' lip twitches on reflex when Cor looks up at Nyx with that same bored expression he looks at everything and everyone. “Do the Crownsguard have some kind of warcry motto thing?” 

“...no?” Cor says, blinking slowly, but at least, Libertus concedes grumpily, he doesn't outright ignore Nyx. He frowns, though, and Libertus feels that urge again, the suicidal one, to punch the asshole in the mouth. “Why?” 

“Because I'd have to come up with one for the Kingsglaive, if you did,” Nyx replies, laughing in the face of a scowl that puts lesser men – or Pelna – into catatonic panic when it's aimed at them. 

“Have you considered _don't fucking die, you idiots_?” Cor deadpans, eyebrows arched. 

Nyx howls with laughter. 

“Right?” He grins, “that's exactly what I was thinking about.” 

Libertus doesn't find it funny. Not quite. It chafes a bit, the ease with which Nyx has wrapped himself around Cor, sliding into his life like he belongs there. It annoys Libertus, for all it makes Nyx happy, because he's not convinced it's not wholly one-sided. He doesn't miss the fact Nyx is trying to draw him and Cor into the same conversation, because Nyx is nowhere near as subtle as he'd like to think he is, and because Libertus knows him, every stupid, hopeful, hopeless bit of him. 

Maybe he doesn't fight for hearth and home, after all, and maybe not all his battles involve actual fighting. Libertus catches Cor's eye, when Nyx isn't looking and gives him his best frown. It's not like he's done anything yet, to merit actual words. But the way Cor shrugs back at him lets him know the intent is well understood. 

He supposes that's good enough, for now. 

* * *

_iii.iii. crowe_

* * *

“You don't have to-” 

“Yes! I do!” Crowe interrupts, throwing her hands in the air. “I absolutely have to! Because you're my _brother_ , you big stupid moron, of course I want to meet your girlfriend!” 

Libertus gives her a dumbstruck look, mouth hanging half-way open and eyes wide. Crowe rolls her eyes at him and then reaches out to wrap her arms around his stupid shoulders and pulls his stupid head down until it's buried in her shoulder. When he hugs her tight enough her spine creeks in protest, she digs her fingers into his hair and hugs him back just as fiercely. 

He is. 

He _is_. 

He's the only one who's ever promised to stay and _actually_ stayed. Always. Even when she's irrational and angry and frankly so impossible to deal with, _she_ doesn't want to deal with herself. Libertus is temperamental and grouchy, grumpy and sour-faced, always, but he's never left her, not even when she almost wanted him to. She's almost sure, at this point, that he's never going to, either, and the thought terrifies her a little, because she's had other brothers, before. She loved them, too. They made promises and she believed them, and then they up and left and died, and she can't even remember their faces anymore. 

She wants to believe she'll never forget the shape of his face, when he's scowling in the early mornings before the coffee kicks him wide awake or when he's smiling that tiny smile of his, when he makes her favorite for dinner and he basks in how much she enjoys it. She wants to believe it so desperately it nearly breaks her heart, but she knows better. She knows that's not how it goes. Because he's her brother, but he's not her only brother. He's not the first, only the best, and she wonders, sometimes, when she's feeling bitter and tired and wondering why she even bothers anymore, what life would have been like, if she'd only ever had him instead. Who she'd be, if she'd never had to learn what it means to wait for someone that's never coming home. 

Libertus always comes home. Tired and cranky and sometimes even hurt, complaining about everything and nothing, but there. 

“She's not Galahdian,” he says, nervous and awkward, pulling away from the hug to stare at her and better measure her reaction to the news. 

“Oh no,” Crowe replies, grinning sincerely, “the scandal!” 

“I'm serious!” He snorts, shaking her shoulders a little before pulling back and going back to fuss with dinner, even though he finished it about an hour ago. “She's... I mean, she's nice about it and she tries not to be a dick on purpose, but she's really Lucian. Like. _Really Lucian_.” 

“Nyx is fucking Cor,” Crowe points out, eyebrows arched in amusement, “it doesn't get more Lucian than that. And I like Cor alright.” Crowe snickers. “I like him more than you do, anyway.” 

Because Libertus is her brother, but he's also Nyx's brother, and she despairs at him a little, with how much he doesn't get Nyx and what actually makes him happy. Crowe's never been one for dating, proper, like exchanging phone numbers and talking all the time and all the little romantic gesture things that feel like too much trouble to her. She wonders if Libertus is going to be that way to whoever she ends up dating – who knows, she might find the right person one day, and maybe all the chore-like tidbits that seem boring now will be worthwihle then, she's not entirely opposed to the idea. She remembers, vaguely, one of her brothers teasing her about it, when she was four and she still liked dancing in the rain, how he was going to have to beat up hordes of suitors one day, even though she hadn't really understood what he meant, then. 

“I don't know,” Libertus replies seriously, rather than cracking a meanspirted joke about it, and that's how Crowe knows this means a lot more to him than he's trying to let on. “I mean, Letho's went-to-college kind of Lucian.” 

“So she's smart,” Crowe says, amused at the look on his face. “And I know she doesn't talk shit, because you don't put up with that crap from anyone. So far, so good.” 

“It's just,” he begins, fumbling for words, “you know. We just like to argue a lot.” 

“Shocker,” Crowe deadpans, “considering how much of a people-person you are.” 

“I'm just... trying to give you fair warning,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. “I mean-” 

“Libertus,” Crowe says, hands on her hips and amused smile hanging off her mouth. “Does she make you happy?” 

His shoulders sag. 

“Yeah.” 

Crowe grins. 

“I love her already.” 

* * *

_iii.iv pelna_

* * *

“Dumb question,” Pelna says, reaching a hand to brush Amira's hair off her face, “how are you feeling?” 

“That's not dumb, love,” she replies, laughing a little tiredly as she thumbs across Harit's little head, eyes gone soft as she watches him feed with the content look of someone who's done a good job and is basking in it. “I feel this is the right moment to point out, next time is your turn.” 

Pelna laughs, giddy and silly and completely smitten to the bottom of his soul, and leans in to kiss her for it. 

“As much as I'd like to spare you the hassle,” he says, “I don't think that's how it works.” 

“ _Now_ you tell me,” she snorts, “should have put that, in the sales pitch.” 

“Hey, it was a pretty good sales pitch, to be fair,” Pelna replies, leaning in to brush his lips against the crown of his newborn son, before he sat at the edge of the bed and reached out to hold Amira's free hand in his. “I did promise you unending love and adoration for the rest of our lives.” 

Her lips twitched and then bloomed into a smile when he raised her hand to his lips, as if to demonstrate precisely what he meant. 

“I suppose you did,” Amira sighs, twining their fingers and staring at her son with a twinge of wonder in her eyes. “Even delivered, too.” 

“Always,” Pelna promised, kissing her fingers again. Then he grinned the widest, stupidest grin he could muster. “ _We have a son_.” 

“We do,” Amira muses with a wry smile, “and you should cherish him greatly, because I don't think I'm up for doing this again.” 

A year later, when Scilpio's born, Pelna is gracious enough to not remind her of this conversation. 

* * *

_iii.v. luche_

* * *

Galahdians don't honor the dead. It's their whole _thing_. You live, and then you die, and then the rest of the world moves on, because you're a speck of nothing and no one gives a fuck. And everything in Galahd wants you dead, anyway, so it's not something that they linger on, at all. 

Luche doesn't really remember much, about Galahd. Cetainly not enough to be as hung up about it as most people he knows. Galahd fell, and that's all there is to it. It ended. It's gone and they're probably never going back. Almost certainly now, despite Ulric's platitudes about it after his trip to scout out the situation now that the war has lulled – that's another thing Luche is contrary about, everyone talks about the war being over, but Nilfheim is still there, festering beneath the Glacian's wrath. A war is a tango, it takes two to fight it and two to stop it, and Luche is not dumb enough to buy the idea of peace, when low in his gut the thought remains, the certainty they're not done yet. 

“Hey, mom,” he says, as he closes the door behind him and drops the keys onto the table, next to the small urn. 

Galahdians do not mourn the dead, do not honor their passing and hold onto their memory once they're gone. Luche thinks this is his mother's last joke, one last spiteful little reminder of everything he's not. Asking him to hold onto her ashes until he can scatter them home is the sort of fucked up, twisted thing she'd do, because she knew he wasn't Galahdian enough to not do as she asked. He thinks about throwing them out three times a week, but somehow he never decides to. 

Luche loves his mother, in present tense, in the now, even if sometimes he doubted it, while she was still alive. And still, he wants to hurl her out the window, because yelling at her isn't the same when she's not yelling back. It's fucked up and sad and awkward, but that's just about the entirety of his life in a nutshell anyway. 

He drops himself into the couch and looks through his phone, mouth twisted into an unhappy frown. It'll be four years, on Saturday, since she died and left him with an impossible task to accomplish and the world's most accusatory urn to judge him for it. He should be over it. He is, most of the time. She's gone and he's not, and for all he fails at following tradition and being the sort of perfect Galahdian exile – they're not exiles, they're refugees, they ran and they're never going back and the insistent terminology just pisses him off, every time – he still thinks he should be Galahdian enough to not care. 

She's dead, and he's not, and it's fine except it never is, and there's a million things he never got around to tell her, and it feels stupid to say them, now. So he doesn't. He doesn't. 

“Hey,” he says, when Aranea picks up the line, “you busy?” 

“Always,” she replies, bratty and terrible, “but ask me anyway.” 

“Pool and beer?” He snorts, lips twitching. “Maybe sex too, if you're up for ignoring curfew.” 

“See, you're buying me dinner, too,” she says, and in his mind he can see her, arching an eyebrow and looking imperious like the dragons in the paintings in the Citadel, “just for that curfew jab.” 

“See you in an hour, then,” he snorts and hangs up before she can bitch at him some more. 

One of these days, he's going to make a fool of himself, when he pisses her off enough and she doesn't show. One day, but hopefully not today. He should get up and take a shower, if nothing else to wash the sweat off. He sits there a moment longer, holding a one-sided stare off with the urn. 

“Fuck off, mom,” he says finally, once he's done reviewing the imaginary litany in his mind. 

His mother would have hated Aranea. But then his mother always did hate everything that made him even the tiniest bit happy, anyway. 

* * *


	4. bar fights | relaxation after deployment | drunken shenanigans | secret hobbies

* * *

_iv. bar fights | relaxation after deployment | drunken shenanigans | secret hobbies_

* * *

_iv.i. nyx_

* * *

The first time Nyx talks Cor into taking him along to a concert is very nearly the last. 

Nyx likes all sort of music, or at least he thought so, until he got a real chance to realize the sort of music Cor enjoys. Which isn't so much music as vaguely harmonized screeching to a beat. He's still decompressing from his last mission in Duscae, though, jittery and uncomfortable now that the worst is over and he can really appreciate how many things could have gone wrong, but mercifully didn't. His usual post deployment routine involves Prompto first, always, and then later sex and Cor and sometimes food, if he remembers it by the time they're done. Except this time is different because he's home early and Prompto's staying the night at the Amicitia estate because Cor had plans for the night. Plans which now include Nyx, even though Nyx is not sure he's glad about that. 

Well, he is, a little, because it's the kind of roundabout nice thing Cor would do, invite Nyx along and be nonchallat about it, always, like Nyx was always part of the plan in the first place. 

But then they're sitting on crates – well, Cor's sitting on a crate, Nyx is drunk and mostly sitting on him – in a corner of a werehouse of the harbor district, drinking alcohol of very dubious origins while on the makeshift stage one member of the band is legitimatley and sincerely playing the baseball bat against an almost artistic array of trashcans, and it is all so deliciously bizarre Nyx would think Cor is trolling the shit out of him, except he keeps wording off the songs under his breath, in lieu of actually singing along. 

“This is illegal,” Nyx points out a bit stupidly, his face tucked into the crook of Cor's neck and eyes half lidded because he's drunk and the bass is deafening enough he can feel it in his bones. “All of it.” 

“Yes,” Cor replies, serene and unruffled, like there isn't a barfight taking place literally two feet away from them, because someone bumped into someone else and now there's beer on the floor mingling with blood from a split lip, and honestly, Nyx is too drunk and also a bit too highstrung for this shit. 

“Isn't it literally your job to stop this from happening?” 

Cor shrugs indolently. 

“I'm off duty.” 

“You're off-kilter too,” Nyx snorts, and finds, despite the noise – it's not music, he's decided, since the lead guitarrist smashed his instrument in face of the lead singer, and is now the new lead singer, because that is in fact a thing that happens – the violence and the sinking feeling that he really, really shouldn't be here at all, that he's relaxing. 

He's not really sure how they made it back home – he has a very distinct memory of a blowjob in the back of a car, but given the hangover he's nursing in the morning, he's not sure that was actually a thing that happened. 

* * *

_iv.ii. libertus_

* * *

“I should open a bar,” Libertus announces after a moment, watching Sonitus stick a foot out at the precise moment to cause Tredd to go down squawking in outrage. 

“You realize you don't get to drink your own bar dry,” Axis points out, arching an eyebrow at him. “And you have to pay for all the damages.” 

“It'd be my bar,” Libertus retorts, shuffling closer to Axis to avoid Sonitus' entire bulk as Tredd shoves him towards the bar with a snarl. “I'd get to drink away my own bottomline if I wanted to.” 

Axis snorts. 

“Point.” 

“And anyway,” Libertus goes on, smirking when the rough housing reaches Luche and ends with his drink in his hair, “with how much you guys drink, success'd be a given.” 

“If you wanted success, you'd open a restaurant,” Axis says, head tilted slightly to the side. “To be honest.” 

“And whore away my cooking?” Libertus retorts, looking vaguely offended. “I should split your mug in half for even suggesting it.” 

“But you'll whore away beer?” Axis snorts, clearly amused at Libertus' outrage, because of course he is, the bastard. 

“Beer's for whoring anyway,” Libertus declares solemnly and makes a toast with his bottle before drowning it in one go. 

“And clearly you've been whoring tonight,” Axis notes with a meanspirited snicker. 

“Did you get eaten by a giant snake today?” Libertus asks him scowling. 

“Almost eaten,” Axis corrects him with a mutter behind his own beer. 

“Because I got eaten by a giant snake today.” 

“Almost eaten,” Axis insists, since he'd been there to see it, in the first place. “And you're being melodramatic.” 

“Giant. Fucking. Snake.” Libertus mutters angrily tapping on the bar with his empty bottle to get another one from the sour-looking owner that's apparently regretting his decision to house them for the night. 

“I was there, yes,” Axis says, “and this somehow convinced you to open a bar?” 

“No giant snakes in bars,” Libertus points out with a shrug that makes Axis laugh. “Not ones with fangs anyway.” 

* * *

_iv.iii. crowe_

* * *

Crowe doesn't get into drunken fights in bars. Not really. Mostly because she's not an idiot who needs to punch things to figure out her feelings, unlike pretty much everyone else she knows. Crowe likes to drink sweet, fruity drinks with enough alcohol to down a fully grown Garulessa and enjoy the sight of her moron friends slowly unravel into violence instead. 

This does not mean that Crowe doesn't know how to put a sudden end to a fight, though. Because she does. 

“Wanna say that again, pal?” She asks, eyes icy cold and hands glowing with the promise of fire and brimstone as she stares down the pack of nosy Crownsguard idiots that felt necessary to pop in and start shit with them. 

“Crowe,” Pelna says, from somewhere on the floor, holding onto his broken nose with one hand and trying to crawl his way back upright again. “ _Don't_.” 

Crowe ignores him, making a show to arc lightning between her fingers, smirking at the increasingly nervous looks of the men that are no longer feeling quite so brave as to run their mouths. Or their fists. 

“That's what I thought,” she scoffs, when they give up pretenses and scurry out the bar as fast as their feet will take them. “Assholes.” 

Crowe hauls Pelna up and back onto his chair with a wry smile. 

“That was very unwise,” he says, frowning. “You know we're not supposed to use magic inside the Wall.” 

Crowe stares him down with a vague pitying look, like he's a small child that needs to be humored. 

“ _They_ don't know that, I don't think.” She arches an eyebrow at him. “And you're not going to tell them, either. Because then I'll tell Amira.” 

That shuts him up nicely, so Crowe grins at his sullen glares and reaches out to see how much fixing his face is going to need, before she sends him home. 

* * *

_iv.iv pelna_

* * *

Pelna never starts fights, on principle. Most of the time, he doesn't need to, anyway, with the friends he keeps, fights keep finding him anyway. He's good at ducking, at least, and he likes to joke with his wife that one of these days he's going to figure out how to dodge in his sleep. Amira rolls her eyes but she's amused by most of it, mostly because Pelna does all the worry on his own, no need for additional input from her. She kicks him around, every now and then, when she's bored and he's feeling antsy, just because it's never not good to keep one self's sharp. They don't think about having to defend themselves, within the Wall. They very carefully don't think about that, even though there are whispers of fights and scuffles here and there, and the Elders keep talking about it like it's just rowdy teenagers and not the warning signs of something worse. 

Pelna has a sinking, dreadful feeling, when they arrest him for a fight he wasn't even part of, but he knows better than to argue. He's been drinking and that's clearly enough for the three men in Crownsguard uniform that nab him up when he sneaks out of the bar for a smoke somewhere Crowe won't give him judging looks for it. 

“I didn't do anything,” Pelna points out, in what he hopes it's an even, sincere tone, but he fears might be coming across as somewhat desperate, as the door to his cellblock opens. 

“I'm perfectly aware,” Cor replies, and Pelna feels himself sway in place with a panicky mixture of relief and fear. 

Cor is terrifying, for many, many reasons and Pelna would very much prefer to keep as much distance between himself and the Immortal as possible... but Pelna's also pretty sure Cor isn't going to actually let the Crownsguard goons do any of the things they threatened to, on the ride here. At least, he hopes so. 

“Really,” Pelna insists, walking over to lean on the bars, and maybe he's still drunk – he is, gloriously, unendingly drunk – but he could swear Cor is smiling, a little. “Nothing at all. Never even got around lighting up my-” 

“I know, Pelna,” Cor says, fussing with the lock and then opening the door wide. “Let's go.” 

Pelna gives a step forward and then stops right at the threshold, looking up at Cor with a frown. 

“I don't want to seem ungrateful, because I am! Really! ...grateful, I mean. I'm grateful.” Pelna frowns harder, trying to put words in the right order. “Why are you here? Sir?” 

Cor shrugs. 

“We were just getting there, when they nabbed you.” Pelna stares at him. “I told Nyx to stay while I picked you up.” 

“I'm so sorry,” Pelna says, shrinking back. 

Cor laughs a short, meanspirted laugh. 

“Don't be,” he says nodding towards the exit. “I got to fire three idiots for profiling and unlawful arrests.” 

“Oh,” Pelna winces. 

“You missed the yelling,” Cor muses, herding him outside. 

“Thank you,” Pelna replies, focusing on walking and not falling to pieces, “you're very terrifying, sir.” 

Cor puts an hand on his shoulder, and Pelna manages somehow not to crumble. 

“I know.” 

* * *

_iv.v. luche_

* * *

“Hold the fuck still,” Luche growls, tightening his grip on Aranea's chin until she winces, and then regretting it when the little she-devil twists her head and bites him for his trouble. “Shit!” 

She laughs, because of course she does. Luche glares, or tries to, but it's a bit hard to hold onto the annoyance when she's grinning with a split lip and half her face hidden beneath one massive bruise. Aranea sticks her tongue out at him. 

“Put that away unless you plan to use it,” Luche grumps, fighting off a little smirk when she wrinkles her nose at him. “ _And hold still_.” 

“Yes, mother,” Aranea drawls, but stands still for him to wipe off the blood off her face. 

Luche is, nonetheless, a little bit impressed. If nothing else, because Aranea somehow managed to start a fight in the amount of time it took him to go grab a refill of his beer. Well, that and the fact she then _ended_ said fight by breaking a cuestick on someone's head, but in her defense that was after someone threw a mug at her face, and honestly, Luche thinks there's something deeply, profoundly wrong with him, because he offered to patch her up in his home after they got kicked out, and he's still not quite regretting it. 

“Fuck off, Highwind,” he snaps irritably, annoyed at her and himself and everything else in the world. 

“To be fair,” she says, as he holds his hand over her face, a faint greenish light gathering on it, “you gotta admit the cuestick was a pretty badass touch.” 

Luche's not sure why he's using magic instead of letting her suffer her wounds, or why he brought her back home, or why he keeps having to consciously not laugh. 

“...kind of,” he concedes, watching her skin knit back together and slowly lose the purple hue. 

“What do you mean _kind of_?” Aranea snorts, eyes half-lidded as she basks in the cool, soothing feeling of healing magic, “I fucked them up good.” 

“Yes,” Luche snorts, giving up pretenses, and shaking his head as he pulls his hand away, “and they fucked you up good _right back_.” 

* * *


	5. [fate chance au] | acts of loyalty | betrayal

* * *

_v. [fate chance au] | acts of loyalty | betrayal_

* * *

_v.i. nyx_

* * *

“So we've established that I am, in fact, going to do this,” Nyx says, letting himself fall on the couch with a bottle of beer in each hand, one of which he passes along to Cor, while he tips back the other with a loud sigh. “We've established this is the stupidest idea I've ever had, that it's a choice, not an order, so I'm not allowed to bitch about the consequences later on when I fully realize what a stupid idea this is, and also that you maybe don't think I'm going to be entirely fucking terrible at this.” 

Cor's lip twitches. 

“More or less, yes.” 

“So,” Nyx begins, tilting his head to the side, “any advice?” 

“Tell me about Drautos,” Cor says, like he's asking about the weather and not... not... 

“Glauca,” Nyx hisses on reflex, nearly crushing the bottle in his hand, he's suddenly gripping it so hard. “His name was Glauca.” 

“I know, but he's still Drautos to a lot of people,” Cor points out, and he's so infuriatingly calm and gentle about it Nyx could scream. “You're going to have to talk about it, sooner or later.” 

“There's literally nothing to be fucking said,” Nyx replies, unconsciously curling up and pressing up against the edge of the couch, realizing it, and then deciding he doesn't give a shit if he should or shouldn't. “He's dead, I'm not.” 

“Nyx-” 

“Fuck off.” 

“I'm seriously not being an ass, right now,” Cor says, smile wry and tired and Nyx wonders absently how many times he's gone through this, if he's ever gone through this, and how fucked up it is, that he's reacting this way to the truth. “They're going to ask you about him. They're going to ask and prod and sneer, and every step of the way you're going to want to kick their teeth in and remember you're not allowed to.” 

“Do you seriously expect me to talk about this until I feel better?” Nyx asks, trying for humor and missing the mark by several miles. 

“No,” Cor snorts, “just until you're numb enough you don't react to it.” He scoffs. “The Commander of the Kingsglaive reports directly to the King and his council.” Cor tips back half the beer in one swing. “The King is an asshole, but he likes you. His council, though. They're a bunch of blood-sucking vultures who hate you on principle and will take a not insignificant amount of pleasure in tearing you apart, limb by limb.” 

“...no pressure, huh,” Nyx laughs, because he always laughs, even when all he wants is to curl up and die. 

“I did tell you it was the second shittiest job in all of Insomnia,” Cor retorts, wry and wise and all those things Nyx will never, ever be. “The only shittier job is mine, but apparently no one can get my job without killing me first, so good fucking luck with that.” 

Nyx takes a deep breath, then another, then a shudder, then another attempt at a laugh, closer to human this time. 

“Don't say that, Marshal, that's literally how I got this one,” he tries, and the tone is all wrong and his soul is bleeding out his pores, but Cor smiles at him, sees right through him, and Nyx thinks maybe he can do this, after all. “We're gonna need a fuckton more beer, if we're doing this.” 

“You realize you're gonna need to learn to do this sober, yes?” 

Nyx wrinkles his nose and finishes his drink pointedly. 

“You realize you can go suck my dick, yes?” 

Cor's lips twitch. 

“Work first, leisure later, Commander.” 

Nyx flinches, like a ripple in a pond, and Cor laughs, dark and bitter and endless. This, he realizes, is the beginning of the rest of his life. 

* * *

_v.ii. libertus_

* * *

Libertus hands in his badge, when they try to bring Nyx into it. He doesn't spit on Lord Amicitia's face, because he's not entirely stupid, but the urge is there. Libertus is willing to believe that Drautos is a traitor, he's willing to accept that he's some kind of Nilf spy that got past the Lucians and played them all for fools. 

But then Amicitia tries to put Nyx's loyalty in question, and Libertus just takes the badge off and walks away. 

He's not the only one. He's got arrows and lines tattooed on his skin, even though half the kids in the Kingsglaive don't really know what they mean. But it's enough for them, to know he's a soldier – a real one, the kind that fought for their hearth and their home – and that gives him enough seniority apparently, that if he decides to quit, they'll quit too. 

They probably shouldn't, all things considered. The community as a whole probably can't take that kind of hit, with funds being stretched so thin between them all. But they're Galahdian. They'll figure something else. Something that doesn't involve trying to accuse Libertus' brother of being a traitor, just because he's not there to defend himself. 

Amira puts in a good word for him, with one of her bosses at the harbor, and so Libertus goes from wielding the mystical powers of the King, to hauling cargo at night. Frankly, he sleeps better... or he will, once he's able to sleep again. Amira works the same shift, and they chat as they work, carrying crates and bags, to and from the warehouses and the massive ships. Libertus watches her work and wonders why she didn't join the Kingsglaive with her husband. Or _instead_ of her husband, really. He can't spy arrows or lines anywhere on the usual places, even when she's wearing no sleeves, but he's pretty sure she'd be deadly in the field. But then he remembers the Kingsglaive is over, for all intents and purposes, and he tells himself it's none of his damn business. 

Libertus comes home one day to find a bunch of Crownsguard people going through his and Crowe's apartment. He's furious before he's grateful he's the one to arrive first, or Crowe would really do something stupid. 

“Treason, you understand, is no small matter,” the woman in charge tells him, smiling grimly like her people aren't rifling through his stuff, looking for anything to sink their claws into. “It's purely protocol, of course... once we're done here, all you need to do is complete a short interview and we'll be done.” 

Libertus stares at her, bitter and angry and wondering if she even believes the shit she's saying. When it's time for the so called interview, they take him to the Citadel again, even though Libertus has sworn to himself to never step back in it again. They drag him all the way up, to the Crownsguard floors, and interrogate him for three days and three nights. They ask about Drautos, obviously. They ask about Nyx. They ask about Crowe, about his tattoos, about Amira and his new job. They ask and ask and ask, and everything he says makes them sneer, makes them grimance, and he's so angry he starts hissing and spitting back every answer they want. 

“Help me understand something, Libertus,” the woman asks him, voice soft and kind and full of poison, as they approach the end of the interview. “When we broke the news about General Drautos, the reaction from your fellow Kingsglaive-” 

“They're not my fellows anymore,” Libertus snaps viciously, eyes dark and bloodshot, desperate for sleep but not about to let her know that. 

“Right, right, I'm sorry,” she says, placatingly enough, even though he doesn't miss the way her lips twitch. “Your _ex_ -fellow Kingsglaive reacted with understandable grief and outrage, but nobody denied the truth of it. But why is it that when the subject of Nyx Ulric comes up, you all close up and refuse to contemplate even the remote possibility that he might have been in cahoots with General Drautos? After all,” she goes on, before he can snarl his answer to her face, “he was something of a protege of his, wasn't he? A man Drautos trusted to bring along to that last mission, and whom he'd brought along to other, secret missions. Wouldn't it make sense that he'd mentor him in more than just one thing?” 

“No,” Libertus snaps, voice as frigid as he can make it. “It doesn't.” 

She smiles. He wants nothing more than to punch that smile hard enough her neck snaps. 

“Why?” 

Libertus stares at her, and tries, actually tries, to put it into words so she'll stop needling him with knives coated in honey. 

“Because he was the best of us,” he says, tired and vicious, but also truthful, deep down, “and the best _you_ can do is throw accusations around, because you can't accept that if there was a traitor in the Kingsglaive, it was one of _yours_ , not ours.” 

* * *

_v.iii. crowe_

* * *

“Are you blind or just this fucking stupid?” Nyx asks, voice light and airy, and though Crowe hears the note of irritation beneath, she relaxes instantly as he walks down the corridor, hands stuck in the pockets of his pants. 

“This is an official investigation-” One of the Crownguard morons is saying, sneering disdainfully at Nyx the same way he tried to sneer at Crowe. 

“Ah,” Nyx replies, interrupting, “stupid it is.” He stares down the man with nothing more than an irritated frown. “She's Kingsglaive, you fantastical idiot. Which means you can't touch her without going through me, first. Which you haven't done, so clearly you're pulling shit out of your ass.” Nyx snickers malevolently. “The Marshal will be so disappointed to hear about this, he's always so high and mighty about his Crownsguard.” 

“Who the fuck-” The loudest moron starts, but then his friends are pulling him back, looking pale and terrified, and hissing a whole lot of words in a panicked whimper that Crowe can barely make out. 

“We're very sorry, Commander-” One of them stutters out, wide-eyed. 

Crowe barely resists the urge to snicker when Nyx stares him down in the eye and smiles. 

“General,” he corrects, and Crowe is sure it's purely for the pleasure of watching them cringe. 

Nyx doesn't advertise his rank otherwise, ever. 

“G-general, yes, we'll just-” 

“Give me your names and ranks, yes,” Nyx goes on, borderline cheerful, and he's still slouching in the corridor, hands in his pockets and wearing only half of his field uniform, but suddenly Crowe gets the mental image of a coeurl back home, sprawled in a ray of sunshine, basking in the warmth right in the middle of a herd of sheep. “Must keep all that paperwork in order, right?” He adds, smiling lazily at them. “Crowe, take note for me, will you?” 

Crowe smiles. 

“Sure thing,” she says, skipping over rank on purpose, and the result is the expected glare and gnashing of teeth. 

She could get drunk on that feeling alone. 

“I don't need saving,” Crowe tells him, after he's sent them on his way, scurring about in near-tears. 

“'Course you don't,” Nyx snorts, throwing an arm around her shoulders and tugging her along towards the Citadel's patio. “I was saving _them_ from _you_ , obviously. You looked like you were gonna set their dumbfuck balls on fire.” 

Crowe grins and wraps an arm around his waist, chuckling. 

“I _was_ considering it, yes.” 

* * *

_v.iv pelna_

* * *

The first time Pelna meets Nyx, he expects to dislike him intensely. Nothing personal against Nyx, of course, it's just that Pelna's spent enough time running around Galahd, smuggling and scavanging food and supplies around and to the frontlines to recognize a soldier when he sees one. And Nyx is a soldier, alright. It's not just the arrows and the lines – Libertus has those too, but Pelna knows what _his_ mean, so he doesn't expect Libertus to be that bad, considering he was conscripted to the effort, instead of throwing himself head first into it – but the way he falls into leadership so easily, with a smile and a show of skill. Nyx is, in Pelna's humble opinion, the quintassential Galahdian soldier: the perfect mix of charisma, power and reckless disregard for his own personal safety. He is absolutely the kind of person who would volunteer to join the war young enough to be branded a runner, rather than a fighter. Pelna looks at him, his easy smile and the faint scars everywhere, and he wonders how old he was, when they painted arrows in the corner of his eyes. 

It's nothing personal, on Pelna's side, that makes him brace himself to thoroughly dislike Nyx Ulric, five minutes after their first formal interaction. He survived the worst of the war, back home, and he'll survive the worst of it here, in Insomnia, and that's mostly because Pelna's many things but stupid isn't one of them. He knows himself to be kind, but his kindness isn't blind; Nyx is a soldier, and Pelna has as many scars from Galahdian soldiers as he does from Nilfs. 

“Got a minute?” Nyx asks him, some three months into training, and Pelna braces for it, nodding and wondering absently how bad it's going to be. 

He follows Nyx out of the Citadel, wary and tense, but knowing better to protest or make a fuss. Pelna knows how this works, he really does, and he's got a pregnant wife waiting for him back home, he can't afford to be stupid. 

“Here's the thing,” Nyx says, sitting across from him in a small booth, beer in one hand and wry smile on his lips. “You've been holding back, in the drills.” Pelna feels the air get caught in his throat. “I don't think anyone else's noticed, if it's any help. But I notice that kind of thing. You're a lot stronger than you pretend you are,” Nyx muses resting his chin on his hand. “And it got me thinking, yeah? Why you'd do that. I mean, the easy guess is that you're a coward trying to get paid but not deployed, but you're not a coward, Pelna. So that's not it.” 

“How do you know?” Pelna asks, cautious and wry, because Nyx Ulric is a soldier, but he's not acting like one, and he desperately needs to figure out how to handle this. “That I'm not a coward?” 

Nyx smiles turns wry. 

“I know what you did, back home,” Nyx says, eyebrows arched. Pelna stops breathing entirely. “I mean, admittedly I didn't... I didn't recognize you, and I didn't even met you, back then. But... all due respect, your wife's pretty memorable. And when I met her-” 

“ _When?_ ” Pelna hisses, panic boiling in his veins. 

“Last month,” Nyx replies, easy and calm, and Pelna could strangle him, as soon as he's done choking on air, “she dropped by Axis' place while we were there. She's friends with Reena, isn't she?” 

Pelna nods mutely, wondering what he should do next, what's going to happen now. 

“It took a while to click, so I don't think anyone else knows,” Nyx says, placating again, like he's trying to be nice. “But... I heard the stories. You two saved a lot of people, back home. So to answer your question, I don't think someone who'd do that kind of thing would be a coward.” Nyx smiles again. “So.” 

“So,” Pelna echoes, mouth dry. 

“The Captain's not an idiot, for all he's not Galahdian,” Nyx says, slowly rolling the beer in his hand, lips pulled into a wry smirk. “He's bound to notice, at some point. No offense, of course, you're pretty good at this, but I reckon there's a better way to go about it.” When Pelna merely stares at him, Nyx shrugs. “We've been relying on the Crownsguard to do mission control for us, but Drautos wants to do it in-house if possible. I think someone with your skillset and your experience would be an excellent choice for it, but I didn't want to nominate you without you knowing about it, because I don't know why you're doing what you're doing. So I figured I'd just come out and ask, yeah?” 

Pelna stares. 

“Why would you want me of all people in a position like that?” He asks, eyes narrowed, trying to find the catch. There's always a catch, with soldiers. Always. “What-” 

“Because you get it,” Nyx interrupts, and there's the steel that Pelna has been looking for, the way he sets his jaw and his eyes harden. “You get it, Pelna. You and your wife, you got it, in Galahd, and you get it now.” When Pelna stares at him, Nyx laughs, a bitter, wry laugh that makes hair stand on end, along Pelna's neck. “The war isn't about words. About borders and politics and ideals. Fuck that shit. You get it, Pelna. The war is about the _people_. You went out there and you kept them alive. You kept them alive long enough they managed to get out. Not a lot of honor and glory in it, so not a lot of folks who really get why it matters so much. But you _get_ it. I respect that.” 

Pelna stares and stares and at long last, he remembers how to breathe. 

“I'll do it,” he says, because, and here's the truth of the matter, Nyx Ulric is a soldier, a real one, and he's also the first soldier to ever _get_ it. And then he adds: “fuck, I'm going to end up liking you a lot, aren't I?” 

Nyx grins. 

“Don't feel bad, _everybody_ likes me.” 

Pelna's not surprised to find out that's true. 

* * *

_v.v. luche_

* * *

Luche stares at the wide double doors to the Shield's office and wonders for the eleventh time what the fuck he's even doing here. 

Drautos is a traitor. 

Drautos is a _traitor_. 

The knowledge sits bitter and cold in the pit of his gut, but it pales in comparison to the breathtaking rage at the fact they – he doesn't know who they are, they'd be dead if he did, but he doesn't and all he has is bits and pieces and nothing to do about it – thought he was a traitor too. It makes him burn with the desire to set something, possibly everything, maybe just himself, on fire. 

Drautos is a traitor. 

Drautos is gone and they – they, they, they, men or women or neither, he doesn't know, they're just shadows cast on the wall, laughing at a joke he didn't hear – want him to take his place. They want him to continue on his work. The sick irony of it, the bitter burning eating away at his lungs, is that yesterday Luche would have wanted nothing more than to do that. He wouldn't have admitted it, just like he wouldn't have admitted to the growing affection beneath his unquestioning respect for his commanding officer. But yesterday, Luche would have given his right hand to be sole heir and inheritor of Drautos' legacy. 

Today, Luche wants to hurl. Scream. Cry. 

He does none of those things and instead stares at the wide oak doors, waiting, measuring, trying to hold it all together. 

And in the back of his head, he can hear his mother laughing at him, mocking him for it, because she told him, time and time again, if he didn't close himself up to outsiders, if he didn't build up walls and kept his distance, he was going to get eaten alive, broken and torn. He hadn't listened. He never listens. 

Luche swallows hard and throws his shoulders back, and then he knocks. It has to be him. It has to be him, to share the news and ask for guidance and demand something be done. It has to be him, no one else knows. And it's a gamble, coming here. It's a gamble and he might die, because he doesn't know how high the poison's spread, how many people have been caught in it. He might be walking into a certain death, but he has to do something, tell someone, he's got- 

“Enter,” comes the voice from within the office, sharp and calm and solemn. 

Luche swallows hard, again, throws his shoulders back, again, and pushes the door open with as much calm and grace as he can muster, all of seventeen years old, and deep down too heartbroken to hide the truth. 

“Lord Amicitia,” he says, voice even, “I'm Luche Lazarus, Kingsglaive. I've... I've something I think you should see, sir.” 

* * *


	6. holidays | reflection | breaking down | wanting to be home

* * *

_vi. holidays | reflection | breaking down | wanting to be home_

* * *

_vi.i. nyx_

* * *

Nyx feels it in his bones, the hum of power arching across the sky, rushing through the clouds, as the rain spreads out like a curtain, rushing across the dry plains like a scream of validation. 

I am here, the storm seems to say. I see you and I know you and _I am here_. 

It's almost comical, the contrast of the withered, dusty land of Leide, with the sudden vivid memories of Galahd's lush grasslands, overflowing with green. Nyx remembers the last time the rain was that sweet on his skin, the lightning falling almost like a caress along his spine. He remembers the canyon and Libertus swearing as they didn't climb down so much as fall over in stages, heading for the pulse of power at the bottom of it. 

The war was on its last legs, and they were losing. The storm called, but there was little to no one else left to answer. None of their unit ventured out, not with Nilfs spreading out like vermin across the land and taking them out at every chance they got. Not when they were talking about retreat and heading over to Aeolus and try to mount one last stand there. 

Not when they were ashamed of accepting they were done for. 

Nyx had gone out anyway. Dragged Libertus along, because if they were going to die, they could at least die in the rain, holding onto one last chance. 

When the runestone shatters at the end of the Walk – it _is_ a Walk, what more proof do they need? - Nyx stares at the beads floating above his hands, matching the set hanging from his braids perfectly. 

I see you. I know you. I am here. 

And he wonders, admidst the choking realizations and the conflicted feelings churning angrily in his gut, if they would be there at all, if they hadn't uphold the covenant that day, sitting at the bottom of the canyon, him and Libertus, and the handful of ridiculous, crazy idiots who seemed to have decided that dying in the storm was better than dying to the Nilfs. 

There had been twenty nine there, that day. 

Nyx wonders, as he watches the crowd cry and shatter with the significance of Ramuh's gesture, if there are any other survivors of the last Walk there with him. If they too are wondering, like he does, about what ifs and maybes and things that will make them sick to bursting if they don't stop. 

Nyx finds Cor's hand, icy cold from the rain, fingers numb because he's a stupid, crazy Lucian who never learned to walk in storms, the way he did, and twines their fingers tight. 

I see you. I know you. I am here. 

I'm here, too, Nyx thinks, looking up at the clearing skies and the last echo of the rainbow, I am always here. 

* * *

_vi.ii. libertus_

* * *

“Don't,” Libertus says, grabbing a kid's hand before he can throw the knife up the mountainside. 

He's a green little thing, from Sonitus' squad, gangly and not fully grown yet. He looks up at Libertus and shuts his mouth mid-protest when he sees the beads hanging from his braids. 

“We're Galahdian,” Libertus tells him, letting go of his hand and not missing the way his eyes widen when he notices the tatoos along his forearm. “We don't need Lucian magic to do this.” 

They don't. _They don't_. This is theirs, solely theirs, untainted by anything else. By the war. By Insomnia. They know what it means, that the sky opened up and let the rain fall on them again. Libertus turns his eyes to look over the others who've reached the mountain, trailing after the runestone they can see glimmering above. They're all Kingsglaive kids – they feel like kids to him, and he feels ancient and tired and worn, even though they're nowhere near as young as he himself was, when they held him down and painted arrows and lines all over his skin – and they're all too young to have braids yet. 

“Shouldn't... shouldn't we go?” One of them asks, a lanky girl from Luche's squad, green eyes almost gleaming as the lightning falls on them and then arcs away at the last moment. “We're supposed to touch it, aren't we?” 

And Libertus has a moment of profound silence in his soul, as he realizes they're looking at him for guidance, to tell them how this goes, because their families aren't there, weren't there, to tell them. Because he's got beads in his hair and that means he's done this before and he should know what to say, how to explain it to them. 

They all know the stories, of course. They all know the meaning behind the storm and the promise made on their discarded fears. But they've never done this before, they probably thought they'd never get to do it at all, as the years piled on and they realized they were probably going to die in Insomnia. 

Libertus has been to Galahd, has seen the husk of it, thrice burned to the ground: by the Empire, by the daemons, by Ramuh himself, almost as if to say that if his people won't have it, then no one else will. Libertus knows Nyx has vowed to take them home, and he believes him, but he also thinks he's not going to live that long. 

It shouldn't be him, he thinks, standing in there a moment longer, stretching the silence almost to snapping point. It shouldn't be him, to tell them about it. It should be Nyx. It should be someone who leads because they'll follow, someone who's not consumed to the marrow of his bones with bitterness and broken pride. It should be someone kinder, in that sharp way Nyx is, to tell the truth and still soften his blows so they end up thanking him for it. 

But he's there and Nyx isn't, and they're still waiting, and Crowe's holding his hand, fingers thin and bony like his have never been, and Libertus' lungs are full to the brim with water and despairing joy. 

“Let's wait for the rest,” he says, throat hoarse, and it shouldn't matter, not after Crowe bawled like a child at the first touch of rain, but it does. “Let's... let's do this the right way.” He swallows hard. “We're here. _We're here_. Let's not leave anyone behind, this time around.” 

* * *

_vi.iii. crowe_

* * *

She doesn't expect it to hurt as much as it does, when the rain hits her skin, sharp and icy cold, leaving her cheeks feeling like they're being sliced open by each drop. She didn't expect it to start raining, of course, but she'd laughed when she saw the storm forming, stretching out towards them like a tidal wave. She'd felt joy, then, the same bubbling hysteria that caused people around them to shift and shriek and throw themselves head first into it. 

But it's the same rain, the same sweet scent, the same comforting cold touch to her soul, quenching down a fire she's been tending for so long she'd almost forgotten it wasn't always there in the first place. And the realization hurts, as she stumbles blindly ahead, leaving Libertus behind, chasing for ghosts and memories and the taste of home. 

It _hurts_. 

It's everything she never knew she wanted, everything she's ever hoped for in the quieter corners of her soul she never dares give voice, because she's not sure it will not kill her to do it, and it hurts. It aches inside her bones, making them creak with the effort to not shatter under the weight of everything she's lost and never tallied up. 

She trips and falls, and the ground is hard and dry and not at all like the soft grass bed back home. Home. 

Crowe clutches the mud under her fingers and laughs a sob and then another, and then Libertus is there, kneeling by her side, wrapping an arm around her and muttering gruff nonsense into the crown of her head, and she feels it crack, the ice hiding behind the flames, shaken loose by too many truths laid bare, and then it's all coming back at once and she wails into her brother's arms, because deep down, she's just a small, scared girl watching her world burn all over again. 

“I'm here,” Libertus says, soft and wet and hers, and Crowe digs her fingers into his back, crying like she never could before, like she hadn't even known she could. “I'm here.” 

He is. She is. And all around them, the storm remains. 

* * *

_vi.iv pelna_

* * *

“Thank you,” Pelna says, watching his sons try to catch the lightning in their hands, laughing as they run after the scorch marks on the ground. 

Amira looks down at him with an arched eyebrow, hair wet and eyes bright. 

“What for?” She asks, and lets Pelna hold her hand and raise it up to his lips, to kiss her knuckles where they're covered by a continuous line of shiny scar tissue. 

Pelna remembers that fight. He remembers all the fights that left scars on her and on him, which is all of them, fights and scars. They've been unmarred, when they met, skin soft and untested, and the years in between have left their mark on them both. These days he has more scars than she does, and she's not there to see him get new ones, when despite his best attempts to avoid it, he lands himself in the middle of the action. But she's there, when he returns, and he tells her every sordid bit of it, even the ones he's not supposed to, because she's the other half of his soul, and the right hand cannot hope to keep a secret from the left, so he doesn't even try. She's got scars of her own, battles of her own, and he likewise sits and listens and keeps up with them, as best he can. 

“Everything,” he says, tugging her down enough he can press his lips against hers, and then trail his mouth against the zigzagging lines across her face. 

He remembers her, the first time he saw her, no scars and no past, only the amused fire in her eyes that drew him in and refused to let him go. He remembers that fight, running desperately across the battlefield, carrying as much as they could, making mad dashes back and forth, and the moment they were found and he saw her fall. He remembers he wasn't done killing the creature responsible before she was back up again, all set to avenge herself. He remembers. 

The rain falls on them, like it fell on them so many times before, shrouding them in the comforting darkness of the unseen, hiding their trails and opening up new ones. 

“I'll thank you when we're done,” Amira tells him, whispered into his mouth, devious and terrible and all consuming, and Pelna falls in love with her, all over again, over and over, every time, because she really is the best of everything he's ever been. “But we're not done yet.” 

“No, we're not,” he admits, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against hers. “I'll take you home, yet.” 

“I know,” she replies, because she believes him, she believes him even when he doesn't believe himself. And then, “I'll weave, again, then.” 

“Mom! Dad! C' _mon_ , you're getting behind!” Scilpio yells, “stop being gross! It'll piss off Ramuh!” 

Pelna and Amira laugh, stepping back to see their boys several yards further ahead, waving at them. 

“Well, that won't do,” Pelna says, starting to walk with her hand still in his. 

“Obviously not,” Amira mutters with a smile, leaning mid step to bounce her shoulder against his. 

Ahead, the storm awaits. 

* * *

_vi.v. luche_

* * *

Luche stands the longest at the edge of the storm, watching people walk – or run, or scramble, or crawl – past him, vanishing into the storm. He stands there, waiting for... something else, he supposes. Something profound or meaningful or anything, that'll come in and seep through his skin to fill up the void inside his hollow bones. His mother is long gone, having walked resolutely into the rain without sparing a second look his way. Maybe she expected him to follow her. Maybe she didn't think he'd dare. 

He wonders if he'll die, if he steps into the rain. He knows the story – everyone knows the story, the grand lie upon which Galahd was founded: a promise of fearless devotion that had failed them the moment they needed it the most – and he knows what happens if you stumble, within the storm. He wonders what Ramuh thinks of him, if he's ever truly heard every vicious, hateful thought Luche's ever had about him and his stupid, pointless covenant. Ramuh is the god of lightning and storms and the bringer of the divine judgment, he's supposed to be able to see a man's heart right as it beats on in his chest. 

Luche knows his heart is a broken, shriveled up little thing that keeps beating mostly out of spite these days, and he's found a perverse sense of pride in it. 

He licks his lips and steps forth, because he figures that if he's going to die, he might as well die at the hands of a god, and not his own stupidity. 

The rain is cold enough it feels like an electric shock on his skin, powerful enough for a moment he wonders if he's actually been hit by lightning. But no, it's just his body seizing up and trying not to go into shock. 

It feels good, it's the thing. It feels _good_. It should be cold and miserable and terrifying, but it echoes inside him, still and serene and good. When the lightning falls, he doesn't flinch. He half expects to, bit instead he feels it brushing past his cheek, leaving behind a tingling echo of warmth. So maybe, Luche thinks, just a little bit hysterical, just maybe, Ramuh doesn't think he's unworthy of being here. Maybe Ramuh doesn't think he's not Galahdian enough to forge a covenant with him. Luche is almost disappointed, in a way, after so many years convinced he's just never going to ever get it right, and resigned already to be himself. 

When the runestone shatters, Luche's still expecting to get nothing, to be found wanting in the end. No one's ever heard of someone completing the Walk and coming out empty handed, but he's almost sure he's going to be the first. Instead a shard of light aims for him, even when he steps back, attempting to dodge, holding still until he offers his hands to it, and then breaking up into six, shiny black beads that feel warm and comforting in his grasp. 

So maybe... just maybe... he's worth it. Maybe he's been found acceptable. And he should be so angry, he's been ready to be angry about this for approximately forever, but he can't summon the feeling. When he reaches out into himself, looking for the anger and the hate and the bitterness that have always convinced him to reject his heritage as much as his heritage apparently rejects him... there's nothing there. 

He feels cheated, instead, and stupidly, ridiculously okay with it, in a way. 

His mother rambles on about his beads, the color and the number and how unauspicious they are, but Luche doesn't care. 

He doesn't care. 

* * *


	7. kintsugi | words vs meanings | rain | the end of the road | Galahd

* * *

_vii. kintsugi | words vs meanings | rain | the end of the road | Galahd_

* * *

_vii.i. nyx_

* * *

“I'm going to kill them all,” Nyx announces, dropping the keys on the small table by the door. “All of them, I'm going to kill them. Every single one of them. With my bare hands.” 

He finds Cor lying on the couch, doing what he's done, day in and day out, since they finished moving in: reading. He lowers the book to his chest and gives Nyx a wry smile. 

“I mean,” Cor replies, arching both eyebrows at him, “you _can_. I just reckon you're going to find it pretty hard to be a village elder without. You know. The village.” 

“I wish you wouldn't call me that,” Nyx sighes dramatically, running a hand through his hair. “I wish _no one_ would call me that. Just because you're a cranky old man doesn't mean I have to be too.” 

“I wasn't the one who gave you the title,” Cor points out unhelpfully, and then very helpfully places his book on the floor, so Nyx can go lay on him instead. “And you did accept it.” 

“ _Cranky old man_ ,” Nyx insists, pressing the words into Cor's chest as he allows himself to melt into him. “My husband is an asshole. My villagers are stupid. Woe is me.” 

“Your husband has always been an asshole and you knew that when you married him,” Cor deadpans, even as he trails his fingers through Nyx's hair. “I was under the impression you actually liked your villagers though.” 

“So did I!” Nyx whines unrepentantly and then rolls his eyes. “And then they started on the fucking dam again.” 

“The dam they've been trying to build for six years,” Cor asks skeptically. 

“Yes.” 

“The same dam that gets blown to smithereens everytime they make any significant progress on it.” 

“I'm this fucking close,” Nyx says, raising thumb and index to show them nearly touching, “to actually call in a favor from the Oracle. Clearly Ramuh's stance on the matter isn't clear enough.” 

Almost as in reply, they hear thunder roar outside, and a moment later the windows rattle and flash, as lightning strikes nearby. Nyx snorts. 

“I mean, they're Galahdian,” Cor says, grinning against the crown of Nyx's head, and snorts when he gets jabbed in the ribs for his trouble, “being suicidally stubborn is basically a requirement.” 

“Pot, kettle, shut up,” Nyx grouses, even though Cor's fingers on the nape of his neck are, as always, dissolving the tension on his back almost as if by magic. 

Cor laughs quietly, because he really is an asshole that delights in his misery, but doesn't say anything else. They lay there, listening to the storm rage outside. 

“...okay, I probably won't _actually_ kill them,” Nyx mutters after a long, long moment. Cor snorts again. “But I'm going to give them very disappointed stares.” 

“Oh no,” Cor says, completely deadpan, “I'm not sure they'll survive it.” 

“They're Galahdian,” Nyx retorts, looking up at him with a smirk, “of course they will.” Cor arches an eyebrow, waiting, and Nyx tilts his head up to kiss him. “I'm just going to make them _wish_ they wouldn't.” 

* * *

_vii.ii. libertus_

* * *

“So?” Libertus asks, watching Letho slump into a stool with a bone-deep sigh. “How was it?” 

He passes her a mug of beer and grins at the grateful look on her face. He keeps grinning when she pushes her glasses up into her hair to swing the mug back, because she's ridiculous and cute and Libertus loves her more than air. 

“Folk from Aeolus and Aura are in,” she says, grinning triumphantly as she drops her glasses back down to her nose and places down the mug. “Most of the elders from Anemoi grumped about it, but I'm pretty sure they'll come around. And we had lunch,” she adds, beaming proudly at him, because she _knows_ what that means and he's so, so proud of her for it, “so that's a plus.” 

“Still think you're crazy,” Libertus says, leaning on the bar to grin at her. “But then, that's what I like best about you.” 

“It's important!” She snorts and then reaches a hand to pull at his braids tauntingly. “Not just to help rebuild here, either. There's a lot of people trying to reconnect with their heritage these days, and many of them can't afford to leave Insomnia, for any number of reasons. The fact the King and the Royal University are sponsoring the efforts to preserve these stories is going to help a lot of people. Plus, it's high time scholarship about Galahd is written by the people of Galahd.” 

“I thought you were the one writing it,” Libertus teases, because he enjoys winding her up a lot more than he probably should. 

“Of course not!” Letho gives him a horrified look. “I'm _recording_ it, verbatim. And I'm also the poor sod in charge of fighting off the people who would try to edit it. That's an entirely different thing. I'd never-” She stops when she realizes he's smirking at her. “ _Libertus_.” 

“You're cute when you're outraged,” he says, laughing when she splutters. “I've got nothing.” 

“You've got a terrible sense of humor,” she retorts dryly. 

“Also a crazy, awesome Lucian girlfriend,” Libertus points out, smirking when she tugs at the braids again. 

“Libertus Ostium,” Letho snorts, arching an eyebrow at him, “don't think I didn't hear that comma.” 

“Hey, I'm just the guy who pours the beer,” he says, shrugging, “wouldn't know about any of that fancy stuff.” 

Letho gives him an unamused look for maybe ten seconds, before they're both cracking up. He laughs harder when she squawks as thunder echoes outside, rain bursting down suddenly. Because she's Lucian, all the way down to her bones, and she's still here anyway. And he supposes he's okay with that. 

He's okay. 

* * *

_vii.iii. crowe_

* * *

When Jeanne proposed the idea, after a long-winded tangent about diversifying resources and traditionalist, rigid minds who wouldn't know progress if it bit them in the ass, Crowe hadn't really thought much about it when she'd said that if it could work anywhere, it'd be in Galahd. 

Six years later, here they are, standing by the completed prototype, staring expectantly at the sky. 

Crowe blinks away rain water, trying not to pace impatiently, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Jeanne sits on a nearby rock along most of their crew – scavanged, here and there, from EXINERIS and Insomnia's massive power grid – waiting with a great deal more patience than Crowe, to see if it'll work. Math says it should. Jeanne is great with math. But then, they're playing with lightning, whcih is like playing with fire only ten times worse, and there's a near infinite number of ways this could go very, very poorly. 

Eventually, Crowe gives up pretending she's not too Galahdian to just stand around and steps up. 

“Oi!” She calls out, hands curled around her mouth to make her voice echo against the loud growl of rain all around them, “a little help here? 'cause my girlfriend's trying to do something cool!” 

“Crowe,” Jeanne laughs, shaking her head. “I don't really think-” 

Lightning strikes, precise and unrelenting, right at the top of the pylon. It flares to life, glowing a muted blue as energy slowly pools in the storage at the base. Then, lightning strikes again, and again, leaving a sufficient pause between each strike for it to almost seem deliberate. Crowe knows it is. Jeanne will argue against it, because Jeanne is a silly, silly genius who knows nothing of the Storm. 

“It works,” Jeanne says, voice hushed with excitement, staring at the readings and the waterlogged notes and the fact the pylon didn't end up a melted monstrosity after that assault. “It works! Crowe!” 

Crowe throws two thumbs up at the sky, because she's not without manners. 

* * *

_vii.iv pelna_

* * *

The first year, Pelna spins and Amira weaves. It takes him a while, to remember the right way to pull, the right tension and the right slack, but he gets it eventually. Amira's fingers move like they never stopped at all. So they sit by the open windows, watching the rain, and talk about nothing as they work. 

The second year, while he's visiting the market and trying to bargain better prices for good stock, Pelna meets a young man from Insomnia who still remembers his grandfather's old recipes for dyes. His name is Menrva, and he offers to sell them to him, in exchange for a good meal and maybe a drink or two. Pelna takes him home, instead and shrugs awkwardly when Amira only arches an eyebrow at him. He becomes a quiet ghost around the house, taciturn and often lost in thought, but he's good on his word, and he teaches Pelna how to feed Amira's loom every possible color in the world. 

The third year, Amira takes in apprentices, and Pelna fights off the inevitability of having to hire extra hands to help keep her and her growing army of restless fingers well supplied. Their neighbors are not complaining, though, their herds growing steadily in direct proportion to the demand. 

The fourth year, Scilpio moves in, settling in the room opposite to Menrva's, and takes over the tedious work of keeping the books for Pelna so he can sit and spin and chat with Amira, instead. They entertain themselves watching Scilpio and Menrva bicker over every terribly inconsequential thing they can, and Pelna can only shrug every time Amira gives him a knowing look. 

The fifth year, Harit brings his fiancé to meet them, a bright-eyed Lucian girl every bit as passionate about history as he is about biology. He gives his reluctant blessing to his brother, who's still mostly oblivious as to why, while Pelna and Amira promise to make the trip and attend the wedding when the time comes. 

The sixth year, Scilpio figures it out. Amira weaves. Menrva hums as he stirs vats of dye. Pelna spins and watches the rain. 

The seventh year, he takes Amira's hand and heads out into the Walk and just... _walks_ , for no other reason than he still can. 

He stops counting the years, after that. 

* * *

_vii.v. luche_

* * *

He writes letters to Nyx Ulric, that he never sends. Letters about politics and the Kingsglaive and Aranea and every tiny irritation in his life that he can, without much thought, blame on the man. He's pretty sure Nyx would write back, if he did send them, so he never does and instead lets them pile on in the bottom left drawer of his desk. Insomnia is still Insomnia, vicious and relentless and never sleeping, never stopping. Luche doesn't love it, because he doesn't love anything except perhaps his stubborn determination to love nothing at all, but he's made himself at home in it and that's enough most days. 

He's made his choice, anyway. There's nothing in Galahd for him, despite the string of beads forever hanging off his neck. He's not the sort of person to drop everything and throw himself head first into the unknown like that. He's found his place, and he likes his place, and he's not going to gamble it on a fit of sentimentality and ridiculous optimism. He's not even mad, to be the one who stayed. He's not. They all made a choice, and the fact it was a choice is all that really matters to Luche. They could have stayed, or they could have left. He chose the first, and almost everyone he once knew chose the latter. But it was a choice, their choice. And his. And he doesn't regret it, even when he does. 

He's okay. 

Aranea chooses that moment to shove a beer into his hands. 

“Have a drink,” she says, smirking as he splutters, perfectly acceptable panic rut effectively derailed in its entirety, “and stop freaking the fuck out, Commander.” 

“Shut up,” he snaps, more out of habit than any real objections, since that's exactly what he ends up doing anyway. 

“You're on _vacation_ , Lazarus,” Aranea points out, eyebrows arched, “try to at least look the part.” 

“Correction, you're making me spend my vacation in _Galahd_ ,” Luche snaps back leaning on the railing of the ship at the same time she heaves and sits herself on it. “I'll look any damn part I want.” 

“Not my fault you're so damn spineless I always end up picking up the slack,” she says, snatching the beer from his hands to finish it herself. “And anyway, you've been dragging your feet about this long enough.” 

He has, admittedly, but it's rude to point it out like that. Then again, rude and Aranea go hand in hand like... like two things that always come together, like Luche and poor life choices, or trying to think up metaphors when his head is not really steady on his shoulders. 

“I just want to leave it on record that this wasn't my idea,” he mutters sullenly, leaning a bit more weight against the railing, head bowed. 

“Duly noted and gleefully ignored,” Aranea replies, shrugging. 

It's not the same. He wasn't expecting it to be, because he's not an idiot with his head in the clouds, but it still shakes him a little, to realize it. _It's not the same_. It's not the Galahd of his childhood, the Galahd his mother withered away yearning for. But it is, at the same time, _Galahd_. They leave the harbor behind, with its bizarre little town that seems like a Galahdian reimagining of Insomnia, only scaled down and out of focus. They've built roads again. Settlements. But Luche's feet still remember where the old ones were, and he's not sure how he feels about that revelation, when he turns away from the strip of aslphalt just barely wide enough for a truck to go through, and instead heads towards the old meadow where his village once stood. 

It's been decades, now, years stacked upon years, but he still manages to find the ghost of the old four walls that made up his world, when he was too small to really question it. Now the walls are gone, but the indent still remains. Luche stares down at the faint outline of houses hidding somewhere under the grass. 

The indent still remains. 

“Fuck off, mom,” he whispers, pulling the urn from his bag, and hesitating a moment, before he flings out the ashes into the ground. 

Well, that's the idea, anyway. The wind picks them up anyway, up and away, until they're lost against the grey of the sky, and then it's raining, because this is Galahd. Of course it's raining. Luche would laugh, really, but it withers out and dies somewhere in his throat. 

“All good?” Aranea asks after what feels like an eternity, once they're soaked to the bone. 

Luche doesn't remember when he reached out to grab her hand in his, but then, he never does. 

“Yeah.” 

Aranea tugs him closer to her, sharply, but it doesn't actually throw him off his feet. 

“Good,” she says, tugging again and guiding his arm until it's looped around her shoulders. “'cause I'm starving and you're paying.” 

Luche snorts as he falls into step with her, turning his back on the ghost of the village and the storm and everything else left behind there. 

“Of course you are,” he says, rolling his eyes but not pulling away, “of course I am.” 

After all, the cornerstone truth of his life is this: one does not argue with dragons. Or dragoons. 

It's been working out pretty well for him, anyway. 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out on [DW](https://notavodkashot.dreamwidth.org/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/notavodkashot), if you'd like.


End file.
